Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Ferguson Response

These readings and pieces by Andrew Ferguson had to be my favorites of the entire semester thus far. I was thoroughly, thoroughly entertained by all of them and even the video caught my attention so that I watched the entire thing rather then simply the first half hour. I also happen to have been raised in the Chicagoland area and yet I had never given much thought to Abraham Lincoln. While in elementary school, of course the teachers gave extra emphasis to our beloved sixteenth president and in fifth grade we even made a trip to our state’s capital and hometown of L-dog. However, while I had to write a five paragraph paper, (which is very intensive for a fifth grader), about Abe, I still never formed much of an attachment to the man.

Having seen this video reading and interview, I now want to read “Land of Lincoln: Adventures in Abe’s America” more then I could explain. This largely is in part to the humor and tone of our author, Ferguson, which is also why I feel I enjoyed the articles so very much. For example, Twits on Parade. The title alone is a nice mockery at the young and seemingly random technology of Twitter. While Ferguson seems to acknowledge that blogging was a worthwhile venture, the entire article seemed to reek of commentary about how “tweets” are snappy, short, and pointless and are supposedly usurping the blog community. One of my favorite lines was the play with the word annoying while discussing how much longer blogs take to translate their information then a tweet on twitter. “Twitter happens in real time, instantaneously, without that an-noying lag time between when the moment when the blogger thinks of something to write and the moment when the reader reads it.” Succintly that covers how perhaps thinking is something worth putting the effort into. However, he does say how Twitter and Tweets are somewhat worth your time of reading. Another line he refers to that I found entertaining was used by some of the staff at Slate who said “There appears to be a correlation between being an undecided voter and wearing a goatee. Which actually sort of makes sense.” I think he placed comments like these ones and some of the other more clever “tweets” within in the piece to show us that Twitter may not be completely pointless…however it mostly appears to be so.

I also really enjoyed “The Literary Obama” which had several highlights but, in particular I thought the opening really drew a person in. Who knew (slash cared) that Barack was the first black law student to hold the title of president for the Harvard Law Review in 1990? Now the correlation is intriguing. He has a knack for pulling the right strings to get you sucked into a piece and this was a simple example of how to get you interested enough in Obama’s past as an author to click the “next” arrow at the end of the internet page. The writing styles of Ferguson again are what completely kept me riveted to each page of each article. The man is hilarious. The sarcastic humor keeps one clicking page after page, keeps one listening past time of the video.

In terms of some more specifics in the questions you posed, I feel like he is a republican friendly writer but I didn’t find any of his writings negative toward the democrats out there either. He just seemed to have a chip on his shoulder about both parties. Even in “Literary Obama” there were snide remarks and compliments together both buried in the text about our potential president. He seems to be a man more about calling it as he sees it then making the point to be one way or the other. His categorization of Lincoln buffs is that of intriguing, admirable, wonder and I would say the commentary he makes with these men and their chosen paths is part mocking and part enjoying their work and the effort they put into being Abe. His passion for the past president himself is obvious, therefore I would say from that alone he has a certain amount of respect for these men who end up donning the Lincoln gear for work. However, the tone of this author is generally mocking, sarcastic, and to the point so that obviously colors things in how he categorizes the group.

-In your travels and encounters with the many Lincoln impersonators, did you ever decide to done the suit (I wouldn’t want to offend with the use of costume so, suit, not costume) yourself?

-How long did you spend working on your book? From collecting information to publishing?

-Could you discuss further which technologies you appreciate in terms of media and which you feel are taking from the method itself? From the twitter article, we obviously get a feel you find the site pointless but you also seem to imply you appreciate blogging as a news form. What else do you think is beneficial or harmful out ther?

-What did you think about McCain’s book, “Why Courage Matters”?

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